This novel has a strong opening. It drew me in quickly. However, the idea of a game that people choose to join abandoning their normal lives is difficult to believe. I can understand people looking for more information out of curiosity, but to leave their life to play a game is unrealistic. Maybe if I were a psychopath I would understand it!
Seraphine is an interesting character and the description used in the opening scene of the aftermath of the initial event is well-written. There is a good misdirection in this novel, which I won’t detail here as I do not want to give any spoilers to people who haven’t read it.
I hadn’t anticipated a twist late on, so that was a thought-provoking surprise and there are some interesting touches.
I have read many books recently that are extremely poorly edited and this, unfortunately, was no exception, which is surprising from a publisher such as Penguin Random House UK. What exactly do editors do for their salaries nowadays, because it isn’t editing? It is little things like a missing hyphen, huge spaces mid-sentence, an asterisk at the start of a sentence for no fathomable reason – perhaps this is still a draft and the editing is yet to be done?
The chapters jump from one character’s point of view to another with no break to indicate the change. This made me stumble and have to re-read each time. In other places there were line spaces where there shouldn’t be, which lead to a stilted read.
There is a profound overuse of the word ‘elegant’ at one point. If this was intentional, I can see no reason for it and again, it interrupted my reading flow.
Worth a read if you can get past the lack of editing and suspend belief over the storyline.
Clare Hempstead 